The Airplane Challenge
by echo-elly
Summary: in which I challenge myself to write and Neji challenges himself to remember how the simple act of her dance upon the stage opened his eyes and ultimately saved his life. A collection of related one-shots from childhood to adulthood. Nejiten.
1. Preface

Hello, I'm Elly. This is far from my debut into the fanfiction world, even though this is the first story I'm publishing on this account. Props to you if you can locate/figure out what some of my older stories are! I guess you could call this another hesitant step forward rather than a first step.

I hope that many of you can smile and take my stories for what they are, because as writers and as people, we've all stood in the same general area, looking out the same general window into the same general landscape, at one point or another.

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The Airplane Challenge began on the six-hour plane ride from New York LaGuardia to Pheonix, AZ. I was on my way home from visiting the school I am now attending, Sarah Lawrence.

Stuck between a fussy six year old and a snoring old man, I devised a challenge in which I had to take six themes/motifs derived from objects or actions or phrases I observed on the plane and write a connected story about them. One chapter for every hour of the ride.

To motivate myself, I wrote about Neji and Tenten.

This piece is contrived as snapshots of their rather interesting relationship, which ended up taking on a life of its own. Each one is different and not necessarily connected, so the entire work is disjointed as a whole. Each chapter is like a bead on a bracelet—different, but all strung together into something that just happens to be.

That's how life is sometimes. Not all of life is going to have that complete coherence often found in fiction. Sometimes, things are left unsaid and unexplained. Sometimes, there are things that just are. That just happen.

When I was young, I used to think airplanes could take off just because that's how things were. It was with a tricky sort of magic that I believed certain things could just happen.

Of course, now that I'm seventeen going on eighteen, I realize there's a specific, physical reason why they can fly.

But we often lose much in the process of crossing over from childhood to adulthood. I wanted challenge myself to remember everything, as Neji does in this piece.

And thus, the Airplane Challenge was born.

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A/N. I have written this story in its entirety, but I'll upload it one chapter at a time to contribute to its overall incoherence. Memories are best relived slow, and one at a time. Enjoy!


	2. bright red

i'm sitting at my seat in the economy section working through a single-serving bag of stale swedish fish. i really like swedish fish. cherry? strawberry? something sweet and red-tasting. if someone asked me what bright red tasted like, i'd easily say swedish fish. licorice-like. with a chewy, gummy, stick-to-your-molars consistency.

bright red is persistent like that, and it grows on you.

* * *

He still remembers seeing her on stage on the night of the festival, her cheeks painted a flushed pink to match her trailing hair ribbons. She was among many other women with the same chestnut eyes and rippling brown hair, all lavish and beautiful and somehow exotic, but she stood out to him.

Maybe it was because she was the smallest, the youngest of the group, and the only one his age. Maybe it was because she was dead center of their circular formation, like the freshest rose petal surrounded and preserved by all of the others.

Or maybe it was just because she alone wore a bright red cheongsam that glowed vibrantly under the spotlights. It was a simple thing, bordered gold with draping sleeves that fell from her wrists to her waist. Gently stitched in-it looked like they were scattered on the fabric rather than sown-golden flowers curled a winding pattern around her entire torso, and the pale, dewey skin of her legs peeked out from under the slitted garment. He had never seen such a dress before. It was utterly foreign.

And though her eight-year-old body hadn't yet had the time to develop any eye-pulling curves, he thought she exuded a timeless sort of elegance, all tucked in amongst fragility and youth, as she raised her arms up, looking for all the world like a ruby butterfly poised for flight.

A gong rang out and a drum beat throbbed and away she flew. He only caught brief glimpses of her from his position behind Hiashi and all of the members of the main family. She glided and spun and wove among her sisters and cousins, who all faded away in their bland, cream-colored kimonos. Her face was flooded with something he could not understand at that age, thin lips stretched broadly to reveal pearly teeth, eyes flitting about and glowing in a way he never knew, never realized, was possible.

"Oh Otou-sama." A wispy voice fanned out before him and he peeled his gaze away from the stage for a brief minute to see the young Hinata grasp her stony-faced father's sleeve.

"Oh Otou-sama, who is that girl who dances and shines in the middle there with the red wings?" the young heiress gasped with all the innocent wonderment of childhood. "She is beautiful."

Yes, she is, he thought to himself, and drew his eyes back to her lighted silhouette.

"Do not worry yourself over such trivial things," Hiashi answered from in front of him. "She is nobody, an illegitimate mutt of mixed blood."

Such perplexing things from his uncle's lips.

"She will never be anything more than an entertainer, beautiful only for that moment on stage."

He didn't get it. What was wrong with making people laugh and smile as the audience did, waving their hands along? Why was Hiashi-sama speaking as if those beautiful ladies and their bright red butterfly were dirt? And what was wrong with mixed blood? He still remembers when such easy notions confused him.

In that instant, her eyes fell upon his. Deep brown met pearl for the first time, and for a few minutes they danced together, riding on that momentary glance. Then, she slipped away and became elusive again, nothing more than a curious piece of liveliness and color in a world his fingers would never reach.

"But why, Otou-sama? Why will she never be anything more, as you say?" Hinata, too, failed to understand.

A sharp cold dimmed everything he had been feeling. Somewhere in the midst of his clouded understanding, he had a vague idea what Hiashi would answer, and for some reason, it shook him violently. He clutched at the chest of his printed yukata.

Fly away, fly, he urged the dancing girl. Before somebody catches you and pins you down. Fly!

He felt Hiashi's eyes rake across his back. The Hyuuga head waxed emotionless.

"Because that is her family's fate," Hiashi stated, and he froze, hearing his ears pound with blood to the drum beat.

Too late. He searched the stage again, searching desperately for the flashes of red and dancing brown. He had to warn her somehow. Tell her to fly away. But all he could see was cream-colored silk. They had taken her away, the music coming to a throbbing stop.

The dance was over, and to him, the thundering sound of the applause was nothing more than a thousand pins trapping bright red and a thousand cage doors slamming shut.

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